Road Trip South - St Augustine

A week before thanksgiving we embarked on another road trip.  Since going to Anna Marie island in the summer, we have been absolutely in love with Florida.  After returning fro. Our summer vacation, we hit straight on with booking this. 

We are well practiced in driving to Florida now, so we left at 5.15am, having Krispy Kreme donuts on the road for breakfast.  We did stop at a Denny's for a proper breakfast too! 

We arrived in St Augustine at 1pm.  The weather was very warm, and there were loads of school trips going on.  We took a little drive around before parking at the fort.

This is where we saw our one and only dolphin of the trip.  It is in the background of the photo below.  Typically Oliver is looking the other way.

St Augustine is the oldest settled town in America,  the area having been discovered by Ponce de Leon, as part of Florida, in 1513

It was disputed between the British snd Spanish for a couple of hundred years, before the Spanish sold it to the United States.

The fort, Castillo de San Marco's, was established in 1738.

There are plenty of old cannons along the top

Although there were lots of school trips taking place, we were able to see the fort really well.  The kids really enjoyed it, and it is very reasonably priced.  This is where Isaac discovered the joy of being able to read all the facts and figures in the boards going round.

We spent a good couple of hours at the fort.  We then decided to do a trolley tour of St Augustine.  This is something we have never done with the kids.  We went with the Old Town Trolley Tours.  This gave us a 90 minute tour of the town, where we could hop on and off as we pleased. 

We weren't sure how the kids were going to be on this adventure, but they loved it.  We sat right at the back, so we would not disturb too many people. 

This enabled us to see a lot more too.  This was really informative, and using the map, we were able to get our bearings very quickly. That would have been great, if we had been there for more than one day!

We could have got off at the winery, the chocolate factory, the fountain of youth, the ghost tour.... Except we had the kids, and a limited amount of time. 

We sat out the whole 90 minutes.  It was certainly worth the money.  And I think it helped the kids relax a little after the long drive.  So many things to see! 

You are going to see a running theme in these posts: I wish we'd had more time.  But we have plenty of things to our future bucket list.  I hope to be able to go back to St Augustine, sans kids, and explore it more thoroughly.  I would highly recommend it.  The town is so beautiful, with an expansive history (notice how I have not mentioned that here.....).

Although the Holiday Inn we were staying in that night was on the edge of town, we came back to the main tourist area for dinner at Meehan's Irish pub.  It was delightful, even if it was raining...... 

Anna Marie Island - The beginning

We booked this holiday way back in february.  You know me, i like my holidays.  This place was recommended by a lot of people, and after my own research, we went for it.  I started my search on VRBO as usual, but couldn't find anything I liked.  But I did find Anna Marie Island Vacation Rentals.  This company rocks,  they look after the majority of the rentals on the island.

We made the effort to leave early, so we were on the road by 4.45am.  This was a good idea, as there was very little on the road at the time.  I had been to Krispy Kreme the night before and got some donuts, so we had those as breakfast at the road.

Leaving early was an excellent idea, as we got to Savannah, Georgia for breakfast at 8.30.  We were over a third of the way there already.

We continued on our journey and made excellent time.  Anna Marie Island is over 600 miles from here.  It is so far.... It was supposed to take 10 hours, and it pretty much did. We got to the rental company to pick up our keys at 2.45.  The place was like a mad house!!!

Unfortunately, some plonker (me) had told them we would not be there till late.  That was before we decided to leave extra early......  The gentleman got straight on with arranging for the house to be ready, and advised us of a few places to go for lunch.

We headed to the Waterfront restaurant, and were able to get a seat outside, overlooking the road and the bay.  Man, it was hot, but there was a storm brewing, and plenty of fans blowing the air around.  The food was delicious, as was the ambiance, or it would have been without 3 monkeys.

After lunch we went for a little walk down Anna Marie Island City Pier.  I purposefully picked the north end of the island, as everything is pretty near each other, so walking any where was fairly easy. The pier was lovely, with plenty of people fishing off it, and a little restaurant at the end.  There was loads of signs around telling you not to hassle the dolphins....  And a couple of areas on the shore cordoned off where turtles had already nested.

We headed back to the rental offices, and the place was just being finished off being cleaned.  We headed round, and waited for them to finish. We settled in, and gave the boys a snack type dinner, before heading down to the beach.

Part of the reason for picking this particular property was its proximity to the beach. Less than a block.....  It was stunning.  Typically the kids went in the water with their clothes on, but the water was sooooo warm....

This was the first time we have ever been to the Gulf of Mexico.  It is stunning.  

We spent about 45 minutes on the beach.  The kids had a great time, and it was so warm.....  They went to bed a little late, in preparation for the rest of the holiday 

End of school

So Oliver has finished school.  Over the last 2 weeks he has brought all his work home with him.  He has done a LOT

Olivers school work

I am so pleased with what he has done.  His hand writing has improved dramatically.  He flies through his homework, and enjoys doing other work books that we have bought for him.  Some of the stuff he is doing is amazing.  He was supposed to find out whose class he is in next year, but he cannot remember.  I am hoping the school will be in touch shortly to let me know.

He is off school for 10 weeks, yes 10 whole weeks.  We have things planned, the in laws are coming, he is doing basketball camp for a week, we are going to Florida, hopefully my dad is coming.  But the rest of the time I have to find things to keep him occupied and amused.

Those who know us, and know Oliver will know he loves playing the computer.  Since moving here he tends to use his computer time to play XBox, always racing games.  He has been through F1 Race Stars, Forza Motor sprot 4 and now Nascar-Inside Lane. We have had set times for about 2 years, otherwise he just wants to play all the time.  He can get quite upset over coming off the computer.  Until now, during holidays, he has generally had an hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon.  I want to change this as it will be too restrictive over the holidays.

I have a new system that I am going to introduce to them tomorrow.  Please see the photos below for Computer card rules, and Summer holiday rules

Wish me luck.....